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ft macmurray today- author calls oilsands force for ‘nation'

beethoven

Well-known member
http://m.fortmcmurraytoday.com/article.aspx?a=2860725

Author calls oilsands force for ‘national unity’

CAROL CHRISTIAN

"I love you."


It was with those three simple words that outspoken author Ezra Levant began his address Tuesday to a crowded luncheon jointly hosted by the Fort McMurray Chamber of Commerce and the Alberta Enterprise Group.


Levant, Calgary lawyer and former publisher of the Western Standard news magazine, was in town making the case for Alberta's oilsands which he discusses in his latest book, Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada's Oilsands.


"You make me so proud to be a Canadian," he continued. "I love your industry. I love your work ethic. I love your charity. I love your respect for environmental stewardship. I love your innovation. I love your technology. I love your gentleness. I love how well you treat people. .... I love how you respect human rights."


At one point, he proclaimed "you are a force for national unity" because of the far-reaching national economic benefits of the oilsands.


He said it makes him "mad and pained and sad and outraged" to hear the insults and slanders "thrown at this town and at you."


Noting how critics like U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton call it dirty oil even as she defends it, others call those here climate criminals.


"That's not just untrue, it's not just a lie .... but it's the opposite of the truth and those criticisms are immoral."


Levant came up with the idea for Ethical Oil while on a book tour promoting his last book Shakedown at a writer's festival in Ottawa. He was asked to participate in a discussion going on elsewhere in the building about the oilsands. His only prerequisite was that he was from Alberta.


He recalled seeing photos in the room of open pit mines which Levant calls "oilsands pornography because it's designed to be so shocking.


While he did his best to debate the issue of oilsands, he admitted his arguments weren't that good and those "well intentioned idealists" in the audience who had heard so many foul things about the oilsands, weren't asking grownup questions about if not the oilsands, then what?


Leaving with his speaking notes, Levant said he realized he had another book "and the phrase Ethical Oil sort of popped into my head, so I thought what makes us different?"


He told his audience Tuesday that if Fort McMurray produced one barrel of oil less, the world would be a less ethical place.


In his book, he doesn't compare Alberta oil production and development with other countries on the usual basis of numbers and dollars per se; it's more along the lines of what he calls four liberal values: environmental protection, human rights, economic justice and peace.


Because Alberta and Canada excel at those values more than any other oil producer in the world, "Alberta oil, Canadian oil is the most ethical oil in the world and indeed, we are the fair trade coffee of the world's oil industry."


Some may say that's the wrong debate, noted Levant, saying instead their question is not whether the oilsands are better than OPEC, but are the oilsands better than some fantasy fuel of the future that hasn't been invented yet — a science fiction fuel like Star Trek's dilithium crystals or as per Avatar, unobtainium.


Debating oilsands versus Utopia is not a morally serious discussion, but one more suitable for a science fiction fan club.


Until that fantasy fuel is invented, that 1.4 million barrels from Canada sells to the U.S. displaces oil from other real countries, not science fiction countries, like Saudi Arabia, which until the oilsands came on stream, was the No. 1 source for fuel for the United States. If environmental activists and foreign lobbyists have their way and turn off the oilsands "do you think that for one second, 300 million Americans would not drive their cars? Do you think they would simply stop fuelling up their cars or maybe go to the gas pump and fuel it up with windmills or something?


"No one would be happier than the Saudi ambassador who would be there in a flash to make up their lost market share. And if you think America is thirsty for oil,well let me introduce you to China, India, Brazil and the rest of the developing world."


He noted that last year, for the first time ever, more cars were sold in China — 15.6 million — than in the United States.


If the oil stopped coming from the oilsands, the "world butchers" would make up that supply.


"And that's the morally serious comparison."


Oil does not come from neutral European countries like Switzerland, but the "world's bastards ... Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the world's dictators and bullies and terrorists.


"We are the only western Liberal democracy on that list," said Levant, referring to the remainder as the world's rogues.


"We Canadians invented peacekeeping. Saudi Arabia invented 9-11."


Describing Alberta oil as "conflict-free peace oil," he added that Canadian oil is also blood free from any form of genocide unlike up-and-coming oil producer, Sudan. Following the murder of 300,000 people of Darfur, Levant calculated 6.5 millilitres of blood in every barrel; the total derived from taking into account the number of victims and the amount blood in the average human body, and dividing that into the number of barrels exported from Sudan during the same period of time.


"So don't call oilsands oil blood oil. Don't you call us dirty oil. Don't you call us criminal oil because there really is blood oil ... or nuclear bombed oil by Iran or misogynistic terrorist dictatorship oil from Saudi Arabia. It is an unethical thing to shut down the oilsands because every barrel not from here is a barrel from the butchers."


With oils being categorized by different carbon contents, Levant pointed out that oils with a higher carbon footprint than oil from the oilsands are used in the U.S. In fact, he pointed out, there is an oil so heavy it has its own name: California heavy.


As California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, wags her finger at Alberta saying she doesn't want oil from the oilsands because it has too much carbon in it — she forgot to mention, pointed out Levant, that Californian oil is the heaviest oil on the continent. She has grandfathered — legally exempted — her own oil from California's low carbon fuel standards.


He also took aim at Greenpeace activists who he called cowards for only protesting the gentlest county. He added if they attempted to trespass and commit vandalism at an American energy installation post 9-11, as they have here, they would be shot. The same goes for China, Iraq or Saudi Arabia.


When they are jetting around the world for protests or flying over the oilsands, those aren't hand-gliders they are flying in, but fossil-fuelled planes, said Levant, noting these so-called environmentalists aren't living the creed.


"We should not let foreign lobbyists .... seize the moral high ground," he added. Levant said the oilsands needs to pump as much oil as possible into the world because it means less oil coming from the international rogue's gallery of producers.


He also put forth the idea of country of origin labelling similar to the Made in USA labelling currently on beef products. That way, every grassroots American can make a conscious choice at the pump: ethical oil from Canada or oil from competitors which are "terrorists, dictators, military abusers, misogynist and stoners of women."



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beethoven

Well-known member
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/health/Fort+Chipewyan+wants+answers+about+cancer+rates/3484397/story.html

Fort Chipewyan wants answers about cancer rates

Industry has no place in study of health in community, residents believe

By Hanneke Brooymans, Edmonton Journal September 5, 2010

The Journal's Hanneke Brooymans and Ryan Jackson went to Fort Chipewyan to learn more about water concerns in the shadow of industrial development.

Saturday: The community's concerns

Today: What they want

Monday: Fears for the future

- - -

Residents are angry about an Alberta government proposal to have the oilsands industry participate in a health study of cancer rates in this tiny community on the Athabasca River.

Industry members would sit on the oversight committee managing the study, according to the proposal.

"I don't believe industry should be part of this committee," said Steve Courtoreille, a councillor of the Mikisew Cree First Nation and chairman of the Nunee Health Board Society. "If there are people sitting on the oversight committee who are connected (to industry), they're going to have instructions as to what steps they have to take to look after the best interests of who they're serving."

The provincial government expressed interest in a study after a report from the Alberta Cancer Board in February 2009 found that cancer rates were 30 per cent higher than expected in the northern Alberta community.

Documents obtained by The Journal show the Nunee Health Board received recommendations of the physician-health working group on Aug. 4. A flow chart shows the management oversight committee includes industry, the provincial and federal governments, and the community.

Dr. John O'Connor, a local physician who first raised concerns about the unusual rates of cancer and other illnesses in the community, said he is part of the working group, as is his colleague, Dr. William Griffin.

"We'd never discussed industry being involved in any respect," O'Connor said recently. "It was a very unpleasant finding. ... It makes no sense that an entity, an industry, that might in the end be found to be involved in producing illness in this community should be on an oversight committee. It makes no sense at all."

Alberta Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky, who was away for part of August, said Friday that he did not know about industry involvement.

"The specific point ... was never raised at any meetings that I was at," he said, echoing O'Connor. He wouldn't comment when asked if he thought industry presence on the committee was a good idea.

It's not clear how industry was added to the committee list.

Chief Allan Adam said the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation has been working with the Alberta government to assemble a plan, budget and terms of reference for a health study, but nothing has been formalized.

"They've developed some kind of work schedule," he said. "But then when you look at the team that sits on the health study commission, it's all comprised of representatives from the Alberta government, Health Canada and industry, the majority of them. So when you have two doctors that sit on behalf of the community, well, you know ... that any recommendation that comes forward we're going to be outvoted at the table. So does that work? In my view, it does not work at all."

Unless the suggestion is removed from the plan, Adam said he could not support it, but the final decision is up to the community.

The health study is being planned as further science on oilsands-related contamination emerges. A study released last week and led by University of Alberta ecologists David Schindler and Erin Kelly shows toxic pollutants increase in concentration in the Athabasca River near oilsands development, proving the industry releases pollutants into the environment. Schindler said he is particularly concerned about the increase of mercury, a neurotoxin, in fish in the watershed. The Athabasca River flows north to the Peace-Athabasca delta.

Schindler said it will take a long time to prove a link between the illnesses and pollutants through epidemiology in a statistically defensible way. "So I've been advocating a more direct approach -- to actually sample the foods that people are taking in."

If the foods contain high concentrations of contaminants, he proposes testing Fort Chipewyan residents for those same contaminants. Those results could be matched with similar tests done on larger populations.

"And I think if they were a problem for those other populations in the same concentrations, then you have to assume the likelihood of a problem here is high."

It's essential that any analysis of the community be independent, said Timothy Caulfield, Canada Research Chair in Health Law at the U of A. "The public needs to be able to trust the conclusions," he said in an e-mail. "If the public believes there is a vested interest, as when the government seems to dismiss distressing conclusions, skepticism will reign."

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers says industry supports a scientific study that looks at all pollution sources, as well as nutrition, lifestyle, infectious agents and stress.

"Industry does not demand oversight of a health study," said association spokesman Travis Davies in an e-mail. "We want a science-based health study both the community and the medical profession, and therefore other Albertans, will trust and will accept."

Those conducting a new health study will have to overcome the community's negativity to the 2009 cancer board report. Cookie Simpson, a former nurse and longtime Fort Chipewyan resident, said people were angry the board did not track people who left the community for treatment of cancer or other illnesses. Only those with Fort Chipewyan postal codes were included in the study.

Simpson says her daughter had cancer and had to leave town, so she wasn't part of the study.

"We have a nursing station, but we don't have anything where these people can go and get their results or their tests or their medications, or whatever. You have to leave Fort Chipewyan."

She added the cancer board "didn't listen" when the Nunee Health board tried to tell the cancer board about the problem. "And these peer reviews from all over the world say their study was good. We just turned around and laughed at them. But what could we do when they don't even take us seriously?"

O'Connor says a medical history and physical should be done on the townspeople, including blood, hair and nail samples, and testing done on plants, water, silt and air.

"Definitely there needs to be an environmental study that looks at the sources of what may be 80 per cent of the basic foods for people, especially people who have been living more traditionally."

Zwozdesky is keen get started. "We should get rolling on this quicker than later, because I think the community wants something concrete to occur."

He said a handful of ministries are involved in tackling four projects loosely defined as health and wellness, land use, regulation and community-based environmental assessments.

"Specific to health, we're looking at what we can do to follow up those cancer studies that would not only address community concerns, but more importantly, would be from, by, for and with the community," he said.

Zwozdesky is planning another trip to Fort Chipewyan near the end of the month to check on progress.

Working group documents show the study could be modelled after the five-year Deline health study, which was completed in 2005. The project looked into human health and environmental concerns over the Port Radium mine, located on a peninsula on the eastern shore of Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories.

Simpson thinks the health study is a fantastic idea.

"It's just that it costs money and we're like little peons over here and nobody seems to care about us. So what if those poor little Indians up there in Fort Chipewyan have cancer? Let's put them on the back burner. That's how the government thinks of us. And we all know that here in Fort Chip and there's nothing we can do about it."

The community is tired of waiting. It's a small place of about 1,200 people in an isolated spot. Every death is felt.

"We've had so many funerals in Fort Chipewyan, so many wakes and so many funerals that people don't go anymore," Simpson said. "And when they go, even if they're not related to the person that passes on, they're just sitting there crying anyways.

"Every family in Fort Chip is affected by this. Everybody lost somebody to cancer and it's just so devastating and yet ... yet it just continues."

Adam will have an opportunity to draw American attention to the community's plight later this week, when he meets with the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, on Thursday at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa. Pelosi is meeting with a number of Albertans to talk about the oilsands, including Premier Ed Stelmach and Marlo Raynolds, executive director of the Pembina Institute.

"I'm going to mention to her the negative effects that industry is having on our front door here in the community of Fort Chipewyan," said Adam.

He will ask her to use her influence in the U.S. government, "hopefully to try to force the government of Canada or Alberta to change their policies and procedures in regard to how development is supposed to be done in Alberta."

[email protected]
© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal
 

beethoven

Well-known member
http://rabble.ca/news/2010/11/tar-sands-tailings-poisons-muskeg-and-nearby-first-nations-community

Tar Sands tailings poisons muskeg and nearby First Nations community
By Ben Powless
| November 26, 2010

The trip out to the tar sands tailings pond reminded me of other recent trips to places where indigenous people were trying to survive.

It recalled for me a trip out to the Russian Arctic earlier this year to visit a group of Saami (Indigenous) reindeer herders struggling to maintain their way of life, and also the work I did last year with a group of Amazonian peoples who were trying to stop oil companies and oil spills in the Peruvian jungles.

But in the end this was far worse, even compared with those two dire situations, and it was being promoted by the Canadian and Alberta governments.

We left on a pair of four wheelers in the afternoon, embracing the freezing temperatures and snow for about six hours to gather footage of what I was promised would be a shocking find. And it was -- when we finally arrived on the site of the Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. -- CNRL -- tailings pond (which, at about five-km long and one-km wide, was more of a lake), we saw tailings being released on the opposite shore, flowing out and covering the muskeg and bush underneath. I was accompanied by Mike Orr, a councillor in the community of Fort McKay and avid hunter and trapper, and his daughter.

Here we were, standing on traplines and hunting trails that remain in use by members of the Fort McKay First Nation, as the toxic waste covered many hectares with an oily ooze. At first, it wasn't even obvious this lake was a man-made creation, for how large it was. I had assumed the company was pouring tailings into a natural water body. But it became apparent, seeing trees emerge from the middle of the lake, that this toxic water was fresh.

It wasn't immediately clear how this could be allowed to happen. Most tailings ponds are surrounded by a dam of some sort on four sides, with some sort of impermeable membrane underneath, entrapping the toxic waste. Here, the tailings were dammed on only three sides, and allowed to flow over the land on the fourth. I could see birds flying freely overhead, spotted beaver dams just off the shore, and we found moose and deer tracks leading right up to the toxic sludge, where animals had at least drank the waste, if not tried to swim. And the waste was slowly swallowing up living trees and other vegetation.

It was like a massive oil spill, in slow motion, continuous. We captured some photos, took down GPS locations of creeks and streams flowing into the lake, and headed out. On our way out, we noticed that one of the drainage ditches that was meant to divert streams away from the tailings and into the plainly named Compensation Lake, was instead diverted itself and poured into another body of water that seemed to flow back into the tailings pond. More GPS co-ordinates, as all daylight faded, and we headed back to Fort McKay in the cool moonlight.

The story ran the next day on CBC. On the radio, online, and on the television news. They had been working with the Orr family to set it up, and their weeks of research and trip out to the bush to capture their own footage had paid off. It set off a political storm all the way in Ottawa, where it was seized upon by politicians eager to dig into the "temporary" Environment Minister, John Baird. In Question Period, instead of his normal pitbull demeanour, he appeared timid, even genuinely concerned. I was incredulous, watching his reaction from the Orr home, as he responded to the allegations that the tailings pond were leaking into the bush by committing to have Environment Canada officials investigate, the next day. Were politicians really ready to listen?

That was Monday, November 15th. That same day in Alberta, in the provincial legislature, more questions came up about the specific licensing of the project. The opposition wanted to know how this project could have been approved, if it was allowing tailings to flow openly into the muskeg. Also, water was only flowing into the tailings, and no tailings were leaving the area. To the media, the government responded by saying they were monitoring the site, and that everything had been approved following the province's guidelines.

The next day however, the story began to shift a bit. Suddenly, the provincial environment minister announced that the plans for the tailings pond had not been included in the Environmental Impact Assessment. That seemed pretty significant. According to Albert Environment Minister Rob Renner, "The engineering of these tailings ponds are detailed as the project progresses and so the geotechnical work and that wouldn't be available at the conceptual stage."

Instead, the regulatory body had been satisfied with the theoretical plans that mentioned that some sort of tailings pond would be built, with specific details to come later, which would only be seen by those in Renner's office. On this basis, they had approved the process, with the only chance for public input on the process leaving out perhaps the most controversial aspect. Also, they said now that no water was flowing into or out of the tailings pond.

And still, they maintained their story. The company went on the defensive as well, saying they were concerned about the poor little animals as well, and had even hired local trappers to get rid of any beaver dams that appeared nearby (despite the fact that we found a number). We had no idea how deep this rabbit hole went at first, but the questions kept adding up.

Why had the tailings pond gone forward without any public approval process? What kind of monitoring was being done on local water, plants and animals? Why hadn't members of the local First Nation been consulted, let alone advised? Why did they not have even the most rudimentary system (like a fence) to keep out animals who were blatantly accessing the tailings?

There was another piece to the puzzle -- all those that had visited the muskeg, and not even just around the CNRL tailings pond, had begun to develop rashes anywhere were their skin contacted the waters. As we showed photos and video to community members, others came forward with their own stories about how they recently started getting rashes and itchy sores while out hunting or trapping. It was more and more evident that the tailings were getting into other water sources used by the community, no matter how strongly the companies objected.

According to Mike Orr, there is a path forward from this regulated disaster: "Fort McKay people are directly affected by industry from all directions more than any other group. The community people who must live with the oil sands for the rest of our lives are in the best position to monitor what is happening in our backyard. There is a need to move forward with greater interaction between government, industry, first nations and the scientific community to develop innovative technologies to better manage the oil sands."

So far, that hasn't happened. The Environment Canada regulators came and left, announcing that all was as it should be in the tar fields, echoing what their provincial counterparts had said from the outset. But community members understand that restoring justice and the health of the community must be done, and that they're in the unique position to lead if given the chance.

Ben Powless is a Mohawk from Six Nations in Ontario, and is currently studying Human Rights Indigenous and Environmental Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa. He has been involved with the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition, the Indigenous Environmental Network, sits on the board of the National Council for the Canadian Environmental Network, and is on the Youth Advisory Group to the Canadian Commission for UNESCO. Powless also blogs for rabble.ca.
 
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